BullRush Academy did not create this indicator, we only shared it, so we cannot provide support for it. But, if you are wanting to adjust your mt4 change timeframe on all charts.
The indicator below is a buggy and unreliable work-around. Instead of using a work-around to add basic chart time frames to an outdated platform, you should update your charting platform. Below is a short list of modern platforms you could check out.
- Trading View
- cTrader
- Meta Trader 5
Good luck, and I hope you update to a better trading/charting platform soon.
Updated on:
MT4 is the world most popular Forex trading platform for retail traders. MT4 is so popular because of it’s ability to add custom indicators and EA’s.
… One of MT4′s biggest drawbacks is that it only supports nine chart time frames, and has none of the short time frame. These time frames are M1, M5, M15, M30, H1, H4, D1, W1 and MN. While most people are happy with these time frames many traders, including me, are starting to explore other chat time frames. For example, this year I started trading the H8 charts and it has fast become my favorite time frame.
8 Hour Charts
Since early 2012 I have been trading the H8 charts. I have found set ups on this time frame to be incredibly accurate. I have had a higher percentage of profitable trade on the H8 than I have had on the 4H or D1 this year. The problem is that people who use MT4 do not have access to this awesome time frame. Until now….
MT4 Period Converter
The MT4 Period Converter is a indicator that allows you to create charts of any time frame in MT4. You can create H8 charts, M181 charts, D3 charts and any time frame that is a multiple of one minute.
How it Works
This indicator takes a standard chart time frame and multiplies it to create a different time frame. So if you take an H1 EUR/USD chart and multiply it by eight you will have an H8 EUR/USD chart. You could also take an H4 GBP/USD chart and multiply it by two to get an H8 GBP/USD chart.
Download & Usage
Download removed, read please read the top of this page.
- Install both files in the MT4 indicator file.
- Open a one hour chart if you want to convert to higher hourly TF.
- Drag the indicator onto the chart.
- In the parameters box of the indicator you will see a ‘period multiplier’. The number in here is what the current chart is multiplied by. For an H8 chart put in the number 8. If you choose to apply the indicator to a H4 chart then to get an H8 you need to type 2 into the period multiplier field.
- Go to ‘file’ on the top left of MT4.
- Find an option called ‘offline chart’. Don’t worry about the name, the charts are not actually offline, they are live.
- Scroll down in the list of files and find the chart you want. For this example it would be an H8 chart.
- Click on it and the new 8 hour chart will open.
Remember, offline charts update like normal charts. I am not sure why they are called ‘offline’.
Thanks for reading this blog post on mt4 change timeframe on all charts.
If you found this article helpful or require any assistance at all leave a comment below.
Edward Watson
Thanks but constantly crashed my platform after installing so had to uninstall
Nick
That is strange. Worked fine for me. You should try to update your platform. Also, remove all other custom indicators and test…. there may be a conflict.
Roxy
It works fine for me. Only problem is to get back to the “regular” MT4 charts you then have to hit “new chart” and while you are in the “custom time frame” chart you can’t move to the other time frames.
Nick
Somebody suggested above to create an H8 profile. Unfortunately this indicator is the only way to get H8 on MT4. I am going to start trading with Alpari though, that way I can use MT5 which comes with H6, H8 and H12 by default.
Don
Thanks Nick this works great, thats one thing dealbook has going for it, the different interesting time frames
Nick
Dealbook has a few things going for it. However, it is a slow and clunky platform. I tried MT5 today and it blows Dealbook and MT4 out of the water…
Brett
This is so cool. Thanks!!
I am logged in but cant post. using FF
Nick
No clue what you mean… what is FF?
Dean
Thanks Nick,
As usual, you come through with something completely cool. I will definitely be checking it out.
Nick
Thanks Dean!
Bili
Great tool. Only now I’m missing is to get 5d/ week (5 candles) in daily charts
Nick
Some brokers have that…. I don’t mind either way to be honest.
Phil
Works great! I like 8 hour charts – more or less 1 session for 1 candle. To Roxy: Make your 8 hour charts for all the pairs you’re interested in, then save the view as a Profile – call it 8 hour charts or something – then you can quickly flick between different profile to open up the 8 hours charts and the regular charts.
Nick
I love the one session per candle thing too…. going to test 12 hours charts this month and see if they are any good.
stephane
Geat job, Nick. Thank you
Nick
No problem. Thanks for reading and commenting.
huat
Finally an 8hr on the MT4 – thanks heaps Nick. You can save your charts in different profile names: go to File – scroll down to Profiles – scroll to Save as – type in your preferred name – and you can then switch easily from one custom profile to the next without having to customize your charts each time.
Chuka Madu
not sure I undertstand good. I tried what I thought u meant without success. I saved h8 with EU for instance and wanted to open the h8 template on a new GU. would that be what u meant?
Chuka Madu
THANKS LOADS!!
Nick
No problem!
Cking
I have set a special profile for the H8 but unfortunately, the data doesn’t update. The candles is not updating. Does anyone has the solution? Thanks
GBM
I think you have to maintain the chart you used to open the H8 chart (eg. you use H1 multiplier 8 to get H8. don’t change the H1 chart to other time frame. if you change time frame, your H8 chart will not update) but once you return it to H1 chart, your H8 chart should auto update.
Cking
Hi, tried that but no update. What I did was open a pair chart ( comes up MT4 original chart). Moved the “period converter” to the chart. Go to File and Open Offline and select the pair H8. Another MT4 original chart opens up with H8, Change the chart to my own template ( with MA). Now I have 2 tabs/charts, one the H1 (MT4 original H1 chart and another my own template. As time go by, the H8 is not updating. Am I doing something wrong. Please advise. Thanks
Cking
All is okay now. Thanks, My mistake.
Nick
Glad it is working for you.
GBM
oh, don’t change your template because the period converter will disappear if you change your template. if you want, save the period converter on all your templates. To know if the period converter is saved in your MT4 template : press CTRL-I (or right click mouse then choose INDICATOR LIST) and check if your PERIOD CONVERTED is in the list. :-) Hope this helps “-)
John Morrison
Forgive me, I’m still missing a step. How do I add the indicator to my custom template? I had the same experience a Cking, but didn’t “get” the solution as he did. Thanks.
JR
Why not just use MT5 as the 8 hour is a native time frame and is very stable
Nick
Many brokers haven’t started to use MT5 yet.
Tholithemba B Ntsele
indeed
Nihal Bhat
you can still open demo MT5, and keep your charts open. only problem, i cant use my indis that i got in mt4.
mns1973
Hi,
This indicator is very nice
Thank you tooooooooooooooo mutch
MT4
This indicator is very good and useful.
Shawn - Sg
Mr Nick
You are very kind enough to share what you have experience to be good. Thank you very much.
James
when should 4 hour bars start and end. Forex brokers don’t seem to be consistent?
James
It seems like an indicator like this could be used to change the chart time zone. Could it?
Vaibhav
Thanks for good information. Pls. let me know that EA will work on that chart or not?
hardik
thnak you sir. :)
Nihal Bhat
yes. i am thinking of trading 10min charts for a short term strategy, and an 8 hour strategy that you mentioned for a swing trade strategy.
i dont like the standard timeframes anymore. 1,5minute are ridiculous as they are too short, too noisy in the long run. and 4hr is just not long enough. 8 hours is perfect, but not too long.
memie
already download to mt4, but seem its’ nothing happen, anyone help???
Saba
nice work. its smooth only that it stood alone separate from other time-frames
Scoobyd00
Just found this blog and downloaded the indicator. Even though I’m still a noob who hasn’t started trading live yet, this looks like it’s gonna be useful. Thanks Nick!
jerry
My platform is stuck. How do I get rid off the offline window? Nothing is working when I click. thanks
Kofi
Hi, Nice timeframe the 8hr is but it seems it’s frozen. Nothing seems to be working like Jerry said. How do we go around this problem. Thanks.
Nihal Bhat
longer timeframe the better i conclude. bigger trends.
leehom04
Why my 8hour time frame is freeze and didnt move in a single move… please help
Rob
Clear instructions well done. Choosing a time frame to suit my working day offers great promise.
Jean-Charles Savard
Hi, I was wondering if it’s possible to adapt the beginnings of the H8 bars to something else that MT4 is proposing… For example, the first bar of the day (00:00) on MT4 is at 17h00 my time (I’M GMT -5). I would like it to start be 6 hours later, at 23h00… Do you think it’s possible to displace or choose the beginning of a H8 Bar?
tpa
Offline does not update.
william
Ive tried to install it but nothing happens. Any suggestions?
naveen
Thank you very much for sharing the indicator. It is working perfectly for me.
Naveen from India.
Groucho
I wish that I had read this before going to MT5, however, there is nothing that I used on MT4 (except time frames) that isn’t available om MT5.
Ehsan Shaikh
owwwsome brother
Alexis
Nick,
works great–Thank you
All I have to do, is set up a profile of 8 hr charts
AP
tamselafx
may God always bless you success, healthy, n wealthy.
thanks its very useful man!
regards,
indonesian trader
bummedout
HI, this doesnt work, it says in journal…
“2015.03.25 06:22:01.924 Expert ‘Period_Converter_Opt’ is not custom indicator and will be removed”
on build 765
Nick
I did not create this indicator, I just shared it. I am not sure how to help. I suggest you move away from MT4.
Barry Ferguson
Hullo Nick
Great thanks. I’ve just moved to MT4 from a company where I used the Saxo platform for forex but they don’t offer Forex any more. Can you help me with getting the mouse on each bar to show OHLC and have the ability to draw lines and erase them easily? This was all available easily on each chart on the Saxo programme which also had custom charts and standard including 8 hour.
Thanks
Barry
Nick
There is no reliable way to get 8hr candles on MT4. MT4 is ten year old technology that should have been phased out five years ago. However, crappy as it is, MT4 has managed to become the standard platform for most mid to low level retail traders like me and you. I dislike MT4, I was not a fan of it when it was released, and I hate it even more now.
I would suggest that you get your charting somewhere else if you want the modern features you asked for.
cTtrader or ChartIQ are both decent options.
The indicator above is your best bet for MT4…. but it is not reliable or efficient.
Ramiro
Hello, this indicator has a good performance when the platform is running live, but when you try to do backtesting the chart generated once you’ve opened the offline label does not update, i’ve been serching through many websites regarding this issue but they still don’t offer anything usefull.
Would anyone tell me if this has something to do with some programming issue that needs to be modified.
Regards.
RFC
clare
Thanks a lot, very helpful
FxBigDog
Charts sopped updating and crashing. After I removed the offline charts MT4 worked again fine.
Lorraine Pierce
Hi there,
When I do this the chart isn’t live. Nothing moving.
Advice?
Thanks,
Lorraine
Hussain
In the indicator Properties, click on the Common tab (Next to the Input tab).
then Click the box “Allow DLL imports”.
larry
Good can I also add customised indicator to it ?
David
Metatrader is “vast and impressive feature set, it has almost everything”….. this one was good!!
From a professional trader perspective, I would rather say that Metatrader is famed for its “narrow and incredibly poor feature set, it doesn’t anything to the serious trader”.
You need to run a script (by the way, it’s a script not an indicator) on a chart that must remain opened, part of the historic data gets cut and you cannot switch to another time frame meanwhile! It Then you need to open the offline chart which is prepared to be watched one time, unless you uncheck the offline checkbox in properties. And if you save the set of opened charts in a profile, the charts will not reload when you open the profile!
What a wonderful, impressive feature set!!
Nick
This was written almost four years ago. These days I agree MT4 is absolutely useless.
Sorry to be rude, but if you said 4 years ago that the iPhone 2 or whatever iPhone was out back then was the “BEST SMART PHONE EVER” would it make sense for somebody to call you out 4 years later saying “The iPhone 2 sucks, the iPhone 6 is much better, you have no idea what you are talking about”?
No, it would make no sense for somebody to say that to you.
Think before you type.
AdamT
they are called offline charts cuz they need a “mother chart” to function. they are not getting their data from server, but from an “online” chart that you put the indicator on.
Sylvain
So MT4 offers a vast and impressive feature set, but you need to load a script and open an offline chart to get the chart you like/need.
Perhaps a look at ninja trader or other commercial platforms would give a better definition of ‘feature set’.
BTW I can’t really think of any timeframe that’s not a 1 min multiple?
Nick
Check out the post date, I posted this in late 2012, just over three years ago. At the time of posting MT4 was still one of the best platforms around…
… I will update this post though. I do not want more people like you, who do not check post dates, to leave passive aggressive comments.
BTW, I can think of a time frame that is not a multiple of one minute, tick charts, and charts that are multiples of one second.
Hend
it gave me 3 errors !
can’t open “C:\Users\HP\AppData\Roaming\MetaQuotes\Terminal\BB190E062770E27C3E79391AB0D1A117\MQL4\include\WinUser32.mqh” include file Period_Converter_Opt.mq4 13 11
‘WM_COMMAND’ – undeclared identifier Period_Converter_Opt.mq4 313 29
‘PostMessageA’ – function not defined Period_Converter_Opt.mq4 313 11
what should i do???
Nick
I did not created this indicator, I cannot provide support for it. I do not use MT4, I suggest you simply switch to a real trading platform. Using this indicator as a work-around to get basic time frames on a decade old platform is no longer needed.
nirvana
unfortunately , 8H offline chart is not moving :(
Nick
This post is pretty old. I am not sure if it works anymore. I would switch to a real trading platform, MT4 is not that great.
Ben
Hi, I am new to MT4, I downloaded the indicator – I wanted a 2hr time-frame and it works fine converting it and getting the offline chart as a 2hr chart, but “OFFLINE” means what it says – it is not live, showing the ONLINE live market? How do I get it to show me the live active market for this chart? I tried configuring it under the Tools/options/expert advisors tab but cant find the “Allow live trading” tick box according to a MT4 training video suggests. How do I fix this? I am using MT4 version 4, Build 950. Please advise
Nick
This post is three years old, I did not create this indicator, I only shared it. I do not use MT4, it is ten year old technology which makes it outdated and outclassed by modern technology. Even though MT4 is updated regularly, its core is still 10 years old. And, in the world of software development, 10 years old is very old.
I use tradingview because it utilizes modern technology. This allows me to use tools that are far beyond the capabilities of MT4, and even of MT5. Also, tradingview is browser based so I can access my charts from anywhere with my smartphone.
Sorry to turn this into a rant… but it becomes tiring to see how many millions of traders are still using crappy MT4, when there is a world of better platforms out there.
Dibya
Thanx for this article. It ll help me a lot… So i want to Hartley thanx to you for all this… Thanx a lot
Baz
Hi guys
When I go to the offline charts they are offline. Nothing moves.
Regards, Baz
Nick
This post is three years old, I did not create this indicator, I only shared it. I do not use MT4, it is ten year old technology which makes it outdated and outclassed by modern technology. Even though MT4 is updated regularly, its core is still 10 years old. And, in the world of software development, 10 years old is very old.
I suggest you find a better platform. I use TradingView because it utilizes modern technology. This allows me to use tools that are far beyond the capabilities of MT4, and even of MT5. Also, TradingView is browser based so I can access my charts from anywhere with my smartphone.
Edward Ochu-Baiye
it’s quite clear your piece on 8 hour time frame conversion. thank you.
siolibros
Nice Thread, guys
Before trading on seconds timeframes, what about backtest on them?
Did anyone asked himself if it’s possible??
I tell you.
My name is Paolo, and I’m an Expert MT4 Backtester from 2009.
Actually it’s not possible to backtest on seconds timeframes.
It has no sense to use any EA on seconds TF without any backtest optimization on history data before.
So, the problem is:
HOW TO BACKTEST ON SECONDS TIMEFRAME?
One of the best mt4 backtest tool is Tickstory, available both in free and paid version.
I just create a dedicated thread asking Tickstory Developer Team to add Seconds Timeframes Export Feature.
I prepared a really interesting video about all potential improvements also.
Watch out my thread here
https://tickstory.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1084
and write down a short message (post) of your interest on that original thread (not here ok?).
In that way we will be able to push Tickstory Developer Team to add this fundamental feature in the next update.
Happy backtest to all 8-)
paolo
Alan
TradingView has a lot of cool features. They offer live trade ability using one of 2 brokers they are connected with. Does anyone here live trade with TradingView? Is there a way to use a different broker using TradingView’s platform?
Nick
Yeah, I use tradingview now, this post is very old, I do not use MT4.
jimmy recorba
helo how i can download your time frame converter, i want to trade 8tf, very tankyou
Nick
Did you read the notification at the top of the page? It is in a big blue box
John
MT4 is absolutely not outdated.
Nick
It doesn’t support custom timeframes, it does not easily display risk to reward ratios – essential in trading -, it does not have an advanced alarm features… how is that not outdated compared to modern platforms like cTrader, Tradingview, and eSignal, to name only a few?
renko charts
I like this post, enjoyed this one thanks for posting. “The basis of optimism is sheer terror.” by Oscar Wilde.
tohid lotfi
a million thanks for your clear comments.
could you please quideme a bout if i want have season or yearly candle.
best wish
John
MetaTrader 5 is fine but did you realize that the app version, say on an iPad, does not have the special time frames included. Basically, it looks just like MT4, wtf???
Nick
I wasn’t aware, that sucks, no surprise though since its metatrader.
Edward
Hey there,
I am having a lot of trouble with these custom time frames. I like you love 8 hour charts and have found them to yield an incredibly high win rate in back testing. I opened an 8 hour time frame profile and opened every pair in an 8 hour time frame chart (keeping the original 1 hour charts running in the background so that the period converter indicator could remain running). However, when I change profiles to go trade say my 4 hour profile or 1 day profile…. and come back to my 8 hour profile… the charts no longer update anymore. There MUST be a way around this. Do you know how I can get my 8 hour charts to stay up to date while being saved on one “8 hour profile”? Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Edward
Nick
Sorry but I can’t help you with this. Have you tried contacting MT4 support? They know their platform way better than I do so they should be able to help you.
Deyan
Hello,
I watched some youtube movies and I saw that in the TF is not standard one. Can you please let me know how you did it?
Thank you!
Nick
I use TradingView for my charts. It allows you to add any timeframe you want.
zamjaja
very good
William Hutcheson
I agree with you that MT4 is an old technology but I tried many platforms that you may call new technology but none are as efficient or effective as MT4. The reason for this is that these new technology platforms lack the range of indicators, expert advisers and templates that MT4 possesses. I will gladly change my MT4 for a more modern platform when they become more efficient by having the range of indicators I trade with and I only use three indicators and one EA but the indicators and the EA are not available on any other platform.
hicham itani
Thank you so much
very helpful